Ross Turns Thirty
by Stars Walk Backward
Summary: The year is 1787, in Cornwall, England. It is Ross Poldark of Nampara's 30th Naming Day, and Demelza has a very particular gift up her sleeve. (Also features some much needed Poldark family fluff because there is not enough anywhere.) Demelza x Ross


_A/N: I know you all hate me... but I'm not sorry for this. I was inspired by this pairing the minute I watched the new Poldark adaptation, but felt like there were things missing, so, this practically wrote itself while I should have been revising for my uni exam... Sorry, not sorry._

 _Please don't ask about the other stories, but I have no clue what my brain is even doing. Just know that **if** I come up with anything worth posting, **you'll be the first to know.**_

 _Peace & Love. xxx_

* * *

 _This fanfic is inspired by "Your Song" by Kate Walsh. I strongly recommend you listen to it when Demelza is meant to be playing it :) MUCH LOVE. xx_

* * *

 _Haven't you heard?  
_ _I'm stuck on a verse.  
_ _I'm stuck on a boy, who  
_ _fills me with joy…_

 _I knew I was wrong  
_ _to jump straight on into  
_ _this picture so pretty…  
_ _But he is be so pretty to me._

It was curious, Ross Poldark considered for the third time this week, as he entered his humble abode, that he found his wife not kneading dough, or by the fire, but instead behind the closed door of his office. The soft swells of the harpsichord could be heard through the closed door, and he found himself smiling somewhat foolishly at thin air. She had very minimal musical knowledge upon her arrival at his home, those two years or so ago, long before he had her as his wife. Over that time, however, her ability and knowledge had quickly built, as her desire and capacity to learn all things unbeknown to her had only increased also. He had taught her the chords he knew, though his own skill was limited, and the rest has been Verity's doing. That being said, what exactly had suddenly the _entirety_ of Demelza's attention, he could not say. Intrigued, he took a quiet stop toward the door, his ear hovering just shy of the oak. Once closer, Demelza's soft, distinctive crooning reaching his ears, and his expression only brightened further.

Since the day her presence was thrown into his consciousness, her singing voice had become delightfully common overture that seemed almost written deliberately to tug at his heart strings, making him sing, of a kind, in return. He never considered himself the emotional kind; he was pragmatic, hardworking, honest, yes, but he once would have refused to believe he had heart strings at all. That is, until Elizabeth played them so very carelessly that he did scarce believe the were at all in tact, but shredded in his chest. The pain of her betrayal stung with every ounce of venom imaginable, the agony each day deceiving him into belief that perhaps he possessed a _physical_ wound. He'd hold his chest, feeling his frantic heart beneath, convinced his skin would no sooner gape open and ooze with blood, much was the intensity of the pain. He had been sure it was the most pain his mind could endure, _sure_ there could be nothing worse… How staggeringly wrong he had been.

As his reverie took him afar from the place where he stood, his weight shifted on his feet, causing the floorboard to groan. Before he knew it, the music halted. Ross Poldark's smile returned with vigour. _How odd these last few days had been, for Mistress Demelza Poldark was not usually one for bashful modesty…_

"Demelza?" he calls, deliberately pausing before entering the room, allowing her to maintain feeling the sanctity of being uninterrupted. He hears the shuffling of parchment, before her soft footsteps, heading his way. He steps away from the door, taking on the pretence of having just set foot inside, ridding himself of his overcoat.

"Ross," she sighs in that thick, rural Cornish vernacular of hers and Ross felt the niggling desire to embrace her in the most unholy of ways. Her eyes were round with trademark mischief, as though his thoughts were inked across his face.

"Wife." He could feel his expression was sickening in every sense of the word, as his cheeks already ached with the stretch of his smile. Mistress Poldark walks over to him with the unstable gait that only a 'street urchin' turn lady of the house could.

"Yes, Husband?" she asks, in mirth of his address of her. His hands are large and hot where they come to rest at the curve of her waist. Demelza Poldark was still as small as ever, despite having given birth to his child less than eight weeks previously, though there was a softness of her stomach and hips distinct to the shapely transformations of motherhood. Ross, uncompromising in his affections for his wife, saw no course for discontent at this, but instead had to resist his carnal desires all the more, the sight of such womanly curves triggering a sweat across his upper lip. Not only had this simply added to all her found most tempting about the woman in his bed, but such transformations were all present due to the most beautiful creation that nature could allow. _Julia._ Beautiful, sweet, _intoxicating_ Julia. His daughter; tiny, delicate, vulnerable… utterly beautiful and made all of Demelza and himself and not an ounce more. The thought alone made him weak at the knees, so, as his mind continued to digress, his lips found their own distraction.

"Where is Julia?" he breathes, lifting his fingers to ghost over the side of her face, her skin so soft, so milky pale and delicate, as though if too much pressure be applied, he would break right though.

Demelza tilted her face into his hand, taking comfort in the roughness of his palm and the scent of masculine sweat, grit and cool air that clung to him.

"Prudie be watchin' 'er. I been picking flowers, 'till I comes in here. Got distracted." Her voice is uneven as his fingers ghost across her jawbone and down her throat.

"Came," he corrected her, gently, with a smile. Secretly, he loved her misuse of grammar. "Distracted, you say? And by what might you be distracted by?"

He watches her place a very deliberate smug expression on her features. "I be missin' 'ee, t'day."

Ross raises his eyebrows, indulging her to tell her white lie. She may have missed him while he worked, but this was not what he had asked, that they _both_ knew.

Instead, he drew her into him and pressed her lips to her timid ones with hunger; hunger that was feral and all-consuming after a long, hard day down the mine. Try as he might, containment of his physical reaction to her was always impossible. She's still weak, he reasoned, and heavy with milk for their newborn daughter. Not to mention, self-conscious whispers had haunted her since the birth, as she had asked him not to be present as she undressed. He had complied, of course, but he desperately wished to show her that they were nothing sort of manifestations of her insecurities. _Dearest,_ sweet Demelza… He would endeavour to chase away her shadows.

"Missed by my wife," he whispers, bracing either side of her face with his hands. "How very delightful," he confesses into her ear, drawing her into into the crook of his neck, his large hands rising up her back, one massaging the base of her neck. "Have I ever told you…that when you are not at my side, I can seldom focus?"

Demelza lifts her face, reaching at best on her toes to please a tiny, loving kiss on the underside Ross' stubbled jaw. "So…"

His thumb caught her chin, squinting at her in mock warning, as his fingers were left to fiddle with hers against his chest.

"'ee be…missin'…me also, then?"

Her question was so hesitant, as though she were afeared of his answer, a voice so small and without self belief that Ross had a good mind to rid her of that darn working gown and show her just how sure she should be that she was missed. He did not like to be doubted, but what he disliked all the more was when a wholeheartedly _good_ person could not see themselves for their worth. Looking down into the face of the young woman under his hands, who was, in so many ways, the ultimate a conundrum; frightened but fearless, fragile and strong… Ross Poldark felt a physical tug in his chest, one that almost had him on his knees. Did she really not _see_?

"Yourself and Julia are the air I breathe," he confesses in a whisper, giving her his most gentle and reassuring smile as he then dropped tiny kisses all about her face. She gasped as though she had not known, and it is almost his undoing. With one arm securing around her still, he lets his voice become muffled by her fiery mane, the tendrils like silk against his nose, cheeks, eyelids…

"You best believe all I say next, Demelza, do you hear?" Her mane shifts against him as she nods against his collarbone. "I was half of a man before you; a man with nothing but a past, a betrayal and a scar to his name. You are everything I thought I had not one need for… I thought I was incapable of feeling such awe and inspiration sparked by another… Yet here you are," He drew her face to his, the soft yellow glow of the candlelight highlighting the soft contours of her blushing face, "and my heart is _ablaze,_ Demelza." The words tumble from his mouth a rambling stream of thought and Ross Poldark can feel his own face begin to warm with all he has let slip. He is instantly without a care, however, when his wife looks him right in the eye and has to dash a tear from making a track down her cheek, for his Demelza did not cry. If Demelza Poldark did cry, it was either an occasion of majesty, or a very sorry day indeed.

"You're crying. Demelza, have I upset––" he begins, out of panic that Demelza not once had shed a tear in all the time she had known him.

" _Upset_?" Ross can barely blink before he is ambushed. For this time it is her lips to be all about his face, leaving feverous, soft kisses in their wake. He grasps at her bodice in an attempt to reign in her affections, bashfulness heating his cheeks, but Demelza is not sobered. As her hands firmly brace his face, Ross watches as his wife speaks through the roughness of her emotions.

"This very minu'e, Ross Poldark, I could not tell you wha' it be to feel upse'…"

He smiles, though the smile wobbles with emotion, at her use of his full name. So authoritative could his wife be.

Next though, she says something Ross Poldark never thought he'd need to hear, but as he did, he felt the selfish fuel of love racing through his every cell.

"Thee be everything to me, Ross." Her voice is a reverent whisper, the low volume allowing both to feel as though a sort of spherical bubble had enclosed them in their own world. "I do find it a hard struggle to stomach such kindness that you be givin' me, but know that that ain't out of bein' ungrateful, not one bit." She shakes her head at him, her grip on him tightening, so his finds his own hands flex back. "No, I be just…unused to hearin' such kindness, before I came 'ere… T'still new."

The image of Tom Carne, Delmelza's brute of a father, suddenly ignites Ross' mind with red, burning fury and physical disgust; the thought of the scars that littered his wife's body and just _how_ she came to have them causing him great difficulties. Swallowing down all his anger and sorrow, Ross focusses, instead, on the sky blue eyes of his beloved, wide and honest as they stared into his own.

"I know, my love," he whispers, wanting to put the subject of her past to bed before a little more of him crumbles.

"No!" she halts him. "No, Ross, 'ee don't know, not really––" Her pale chest begins to heave up and down as a dry sob prevents her breath. Then another. "You _saved_ me," she moans, almost sorrowfully, as tears fell unchecked over her cheeks. "Gifted me wi' Julia… _Chose me._ "

No longer could Ross take it, for he felt his own tear ducts burning and his throat uneven as he attempted to swallow, as though a frog had taken nested there.

"Oh, Demelza," he breathes, instantly lifting her into his arms with ease, crushing her into his chest with the vigour and strength of a bear. "My love, my _life._ " The words were painful to voice, he noticed, as his throat ached under the pressure of unshed emotion, but still he bit it back. "Of _course_ I chose you… I had not a choice, for you had, _have,_ very much a vice's hold over me. It is _you_ who gave _I_ Julia," his voice was an almost silent whisper, as he did not trust his voice to remain unbroken. "I will never be able to bestow the level of happiness the two of you bring to me…but I will endeavour to try, for the entirety of my life." Lips hungry, they seeks her small pink ones with reckless abandon, his hands rooted in the depth of her curls as though to prevent them from ever having to part. All too soon, however, there was noise not too far afield, probably Ginny preparing to take her leave, and the two, somewhat disorientated, untangled.

With large hands, he began smoothing the heels of his palms over his wife's cheeks to capture the tears left here, all the while, cooing her into a more sober state.

"I love thee," she whispers in a tearful whimper against his corse shirt, just before she let him go. He squeezed her upper body one last time in reply, his lips lazily finding her hairline and smothering a kiss there tenderly.

"And I you, my love."

"Shall we g' 'nd fin' our li'l thing, then?" Demelza suggested, sniffling, intaking air through her nose in a hurry to clear it, stepping back and smoothing out her apron. "She be wantin' her Papa by such a late hour as this."

Ross's lips curled at the thought of his daughter as he cleared his throat, eagerly taking his wife's arm, making sure to lead her carefully out of the room.

Doing so only when he'd peeked at the papers left on top of the harpsichord though, of course.

–

As Demelza awoke the next morning, she was surprised for a moment to feel Ross' warm bare sternum against her cheek, despite the warm sun shining through the window. Shouldn't he be up and down the mine, by now?

"Oh, _Judas!_ Ross!" she leapt up from her slumber. "We been oversleepin'! The mine––"

Ross barely moved, simply chuckling and pulling her back down into his body. "No, no, Demelza, no. No work today." His voice was a sleep-ridden mumble _,_ his eyes not even bothering to open.

"Ross!" she exclaimed, unable to understand his apathy, shaking his shoulder.

"'melza," he mumbled, sleepily, and she couldn't help but grin at the way he shortened her name; something he was only partial to when he be in his most private moments. "Have you forgotten what day it is?"

Demelza frowned, rising in nothing but her husband's nightshirt to retrieve their fussing daughter from her cot, before carrying her back to their bed.

"I feel I must 'ave…" she fretted as she sat back against her pillows, moving to cocoon Julia in sheets to maintain her warmth as she freed her breast to nurse. "'as motherhood charred m' brain so? What is it I be forge'in?!"

Ross smiles from where he lay, a warm hand trailing over her milky arm and onto the velvet head of his daughter, smoothing down the whips of auburn hair. "It is my Naming Day," he confesses, gazing at his wife's crown of fiery curls.

" _Oh!"_ Demelza's frame instantly straightened like an iron rod. " _Ross!_ Tis _today_? How could it be that I lost such a track of time? I was _sure_ I had a day or so more to prepare!"

Ross' trademark lopsided smile appears as he shuffles his body to reach her, gently leaving a trail of appreciative kisses over her shoulder. "It is no matter. Losing track of days is but a sign of a thriving, busy life, so it is far more important to me that more treasured matters have your full attention." With such words, he rises to kiss his daughter's head lovingly. "How are you this morning, Julia?" he asks, though he knows she cannot answer. He thoroughly enjoys the way her eyes follow his movement or how she gazes intently at him whenever her speaks to her. "Aren't you simply the most beautiful thing?" His voice is a coo, but he doesn't care. "Just like your mother." She gurgles, her lips curling in a round, infant, gummy smile, and Ross' heart feels twice its size.

"She 'as you round her li'le finger, you," Demelza smiles at the sight of her doting husband and his ways as a doting father.

"That she does," he admits without reservation, his gaze following Demelza's small hand as she lifts it to his face and into his curls. "She is not the only one," he murmurs, closing his eyes in serenity as her nails massage his scalp.

"I realise I never asked," Demelza murmured as she lowered to cuddle into his side, delighting in the way he curls her into his side with his hands.

"Yes?"

"I wil've been with 'ee for three Naming Days now, but 'ee never much mentioned it before… How many years of life does this Naming day mark for 'ee?"

Her tone is hesitant, as though the question might make him uncomfortable. The idea of such a thing made him snort. "Thirty, I believe."

Demelza, laying their daughter on the left of Ross' chest, her little head against his left collarbone, lay down adjacently, her own head over his heart, her face inches from their daughters. "I be but a girl compared t' 'ee," she observes with a smile, breaking into quiet laughter as Ross' hand squeezes her behind in warning under the sheets.

"You are all woman from where I stand, _Wife_ ," he confirms with a smile that Demelza is sure could set an entire room of ladies hearts all into aflutter. Again, she found herself pondering how exactly she came to be so lucky.

"Ross!" she admonished him playfully, a faux frown on her brow. "Behave!"

"I have no idea what you are talking about," he replies, in a voice that is so high class that Demelza felt she may faint with her level of attraction for him. Instead, she settles for pressing a kiss to the underside of his jaw, feeling his arm that help to him slip slightly south until his large hand cups her bottom, more admiringly than possessively. His other arm, however, remains firmly in place around their daughter, who coos soundly against the warmth of her father's chest.

"'ee li'le devil, you," Demelza muttered as she relaxed against her husband once more, burrowing her nose into the crook of his neck, her eyes fixed on Julia, not inches away.

Amused, Ross rolled his head to kiss both their heads, one after he other, his tone a mockery of shock and dripping in sarcasm. " _Demelza_! Our daughter is nothing of the sort!" He pretended to ponder. "She may be a considerable obstacle for sleep, but––"

"––She be not the devil I is referin' to, and 'ee knows it!" Demelza scolded with a prod to his side. "Nor is she so much a source for lack of sleep as 'ee be!"

Ross heartily laughed, and Demelza along with him, as the both conceded that she be all be correct. That is, until a soft giggle sounds in the room, one that came from neither Ross nor Demelza.

"Did she just _laugh?_ " Ross enquired ecstatically, instantly moving to sit up and get a better look into his daughter's face.

"Oh, Ross! She did! She be laughin' at our laughter!" One glance at Demelza's face tells Ross all he need not ask; she was just as ridiculously excited at this milestone as he was.

"Oh, Julia!" He grinned, only for her to grin also. "Do we amuse you?" he cooed.

"Is your Pa funny, darlin' girl?" As she cooed, she tickled her daughter's rounded stomach with her fingers, before lifting her fingers to pitch Ross' cheek in Julia's full view. Instantly, young Julia Poldark burst into laughter once more; a small, fragile but _intoxicating_ giggle. Both her parents, so utterly besotted by the sound, practically bouncing in their seats, themselves began laughing.

"We be laughin' at her, laughin' at us, laughin' at her!" Demelza cried through her laughter, having to clutch her stomach as it began to ache with the force of her cackles. Ross, too, was laughing so he felt tears collecting in his eyes as he tenderly nuzzled his face against his daughter's tiny cheek, which only increased her laughter and grins all the more. "Oh, Demelza! Isn't she just _perfection_?"

"She is! Oh, she is!" Demelza sighed, kissing her daughters tiny hands passionately.

"My face, it hurts from all the smiles she inflicts on me," Ross observes as Julia falls quieter, her eyes still intently watching him speak. Demelza, who's hand was on his back, moved to smooth her cheek. As he regarded her, he leant down to kiss her, slowly and delicately. For a moment, they linger, as Demelza speaks against his lips.

"The only other person to ever do such a thing to me was you."

His eyes never straying from her, Ross swallows a lump of emotion in this throat, feeling his daughter nuzzle into his collarbone as he held her against him. "My beloved girls." Suddenly, he is frustrated, for words do not seem enough. "I thank god daily for you both."

–x–

The villagers, as it happens, did not forget it was Ross' thirtieth Naming Day and to his surprise later that day, all had gathered on his grounds for modest festivities, lead by Demelza and an array of pies.

"The cheek of it," Ross murmurs as he approaches his wife as she frets over the food. "I really did think you had forgotten." Out of sight of guests, he allows himself the liberty of lowering his mouth to her neck, his arms tight around her middle. "Since when did you become so deceptive, my love?" he questioned with a playful smirk.

Demelza did not halt her movements, but turned her head to nudge him with her nose. "I did not forget it be this week, no," she admits. "Though, I did not know what day is be when we woke this mornin'" As his hand came to rest dangerously low on her abdomen, she quickly moved to halt it with her own. "I be a tad distracted last night."

"Distracted, you say?" Ross forged surprise into his voice, though his eyes glittered with mischief. "I can never imagine who by."

With a swipe to her behind for good measure, he turned back toward the main room to entertain their guests, though most were sat out in the warm evening sun.

–x–

Later that night, Verity, who had attended Demelza's festivities at Nampara, insisted that Ross travel to Cheynoweth for dinner, as Elizabeth and Francis had insisted. Demelza, on hearing such words, excused herself, hurrying into their bedroom. Predictably, Ross was not too far behind.

"Must we, Ross?" she questioned the moment she heard his boots at the door. "There'll be not jus' Poldark's there, I knows it - those vemon-tongued Warleggans will no doubt be attendin––"

"––Demelza, my love." She did not turn to face him, but gripped her golden gown, her very first gift from Ross, in tight, anxious fists. Gently, he dipped his face against her neck, attempting to be of comfort. "The only way to beat people like them is to rise above. To run the opposite direction is just to anger the beast."

Demelza sighed, the tension in my body loosening as her husband's large hands can to hold her at her waist.

"'ee best unfasten me, then," she conceded quietly, met instantly with a smile stretching against her neck. Instantly, his strong, sure hands set to work untying her red, 'lady of the house' gown.

"It is just a family dinner. You need not change––"

"I want to," Demelza halted him. "It be a special day. My 'usband celebrating bein' on God's earth for _thirty years,_ still alive and well despite all 'ee has lived through…"

Ross halted, gazing intently at the back of his wife's head, desperately trying to comprehend her words. " _You…_ a poor miners daughter who once upon a time made daily of dressing up in his brothers clothing to avoid being beaten by her own father… is really suggesting that _I_ have lived through hardship?" He shakes his head in near exasperation at his wife's ability to be so caring and selfless. He grasped at her from behind with uncharacteristic force, squeezing her body to his in what could only be described as a hug fit for bears. "Oh, Demelza. If only all of mankind could be as deserving as you."

–x–

 _And he doesn't know  
_ _just how far I would go  
_ _Just to see him  
_ _He doesn't know I pine.._

 _So, I make whirlpools  
_ _And watch him sparkle…  
_ _And we'll make  
_ _love make  
_ _magic_

Upon arrival as Cheynoweth, in all its spender, Demelza felt positively ill with nerves. During the journey to his cousin's house, Ross seemed unable to waiver the smile on his face. That is, of course, until Demelza's own expression remained grim.

"What is it, Demelza? I thought we agreed––"

Demelza's eyes instantly widened. "No, no! Tis not that… I's happy to accompany you for this dinner. 'appy to."

"Then, what is it that leaves you stone-faced so?" As he asked, both his calloused hands framed her face tenderly, their walk halted.

"Tis nothin'… Only… We mus' not be too long at Cheynoweth…for it be a good few hour since I nursed Julia an––"

Instantly, Ross grimaced at his inconsiderate thinking. _Of course_ they must not be back too late, or both mother and child would suffer.

"Of course, love. Of course. My apologises. I should have considered."

Demelza starts up their toll again, her arm tightly wound within his, a light giggle on her lips. When questioned by her husband as to the origin of her mirth, she only grinned more. His resignation that he should know all of a woman's probative toward babes and childrearing had her quite abuzz with humour. " _'ee!"_ She replied. "It's always 'ee!"

–x–

"Mistress Poldark!" Mistress Warleggan called in her uniquely sickly sweet, and false tone after the gathering had all eaten - the very sound raising Ross Poldark's heckles on instinct. "It is so very good that you could make this gathering for your husband. Only––isn't that the gown you worn for the ball? Did your husband not consider you needed another?"

Grinding his teeth across the room, Ross was already beginning to realise precisely for what his wife had been so anxious. That woman was incomparable and utterly intolerable. What he won't give to shake such words right out of her so she dare not speak them to his wife again. Thankfully, Demelza simply smiled.

"Ross has been far too devoted a father these last few month to worry 'about such a trivial thing as a gown, Ma'm."

Instantly, Ross bit down the urge to grin and punch the air. _That's my girl._

"And how _is_ the delightful young Julia?" questioned Elizabeth, her kind tone earnest and gentle. "Are you both faring well?"

"She be quite well, m'am. Vocal but very much healthy and happy."

Verity, beside Demelza, was positively bouncing in her seat, which had Ross feeling spontaneous.

"She laughed this morning," he informed the room, though, as to why, he could not say. Exchanging stories of newborn babies was not so much the usual conversation in polite society, and yet, here he was, reporting that his eight week old daughter had, for the first time, _laughed._

 _"Oh, how wonderful,"_ gushed Verity, her warm eyes flashing between he and Demelza. "I must call as soon as possible to witness it."

"So, Demelza," came the inevitable chime of the venous Mistress Warleggan, no doubt envious and bitter at the conversation surrounding a subject that did not include her. "Have you given Ross his Naming Day gift, yet?"

Instantly, Demelza's stone-faced expression returned, and Ross' grip tightened dangerously around the delicate crystal glass in his hand. _What is her game?_

"No, m'am," Demelza denied, quietly. "I feel, knowin' the man I is married to, that material gifts mean little. So, tis not so much a gift as a…performance."

Impressed, Ross narrowed his eyes. What was this? Demelza had organised something for him? Suddenly, it all made sense. _Of course!_ That was what she had been doing each night when he'd catch her in his office doing something on the quiet. He raised his eyebrows at her from across the room, as though to translate 'You needn't have', but Ruth Warleggan was having little of it.

"Could you not perform such a gift here about? For us all to witness?"

Demelza, feeling sick to her stomach with nerves at the thought, knew she could not deny them. All faces in the room, Ross included, looked all too intrigued. Stealing a quick glance down at her front, she gulped and thanked the lord she had remembered to layer her breast with extra underdress, because with the nerves she be experiencing in that moment, she was sure her milk would be leaking. Though, thankfully, there be no visual sign of it on the dress.

She nodded, rising from her seat and moving toward the classical guittar that lay in the corner, something she now only knew how to make sounds on since finding one amongst Ross' things. She preferred it to the harpsichord. She felt as though it were at one with her through her fingertips, since it relied solely on how she strummed to make sound. Lifting it from its perch, she could already feel the shock and hesitance of some in the room, most likely because she was in fact going to do this, no to mention that she appeared to think she could play classical guitar.

Perching on the seat by Elizabeth's harp, Demelza felt her hands tremble. _Not now,_ she pleaded. _Please let me do this well._

Clearing her throat, she raised her eyes to her husband, gazing on him alone.

"'ee has been so very good to me this last three year an', I dare say, that there be no one in this world more grateful than I for 'ur health and prosperity on this day." Bashfully, she lowered her eyes to the instrument. "'ere be to thirty more years, I hope. Ross Poldark... This's y'r song."

With that, she began strumming the chords that she had taught herself, simply because they had sounded nice when she was tinkering unknowingly a few weeks past. She pictured her husband's dark, kind eyes, unruly hair and intimate, warm moments as she began to sing, not daring to look up.

 _"Haven't you heard?  
_ _I'm stuck on a verse  
_ _I'm stuck on a boy  
_ _who fills me with joy…_

 _I knew I was wrong  
_ _to jump straight on into  
_ _this picture so pretty…  
_ _But he is be so pretty to me._

 _And he doesn't know  
_ _just how far I would go  
_ _Just to see him  
_ _He doesn't know I pine.._

 _So, I make whirlpools  
_ _And watch him sparkle…  
_ _And we'll make  
_ _love make  
_ _magic."_

Ross listened as such words filled the room around them, watching his wife's usually indelicate fingers strum such thing strings. _This was his wife… How had luck blessed him so?_

 _"And haven't you heard?  
_ _I've fallen headfirst.  
_ _And he loves me so…  
_ _We're two in a row._

 _Just look in his eyes.  
_ _They're dark as the skies.  
_ _A picture so pretty…  
_ _but he is so pretty to me._

 _So I make whirlpools  
_ _And watch him sparkle_

 _And we'll make love make magic."_

She almost slips, but catches herself, raising her eyes to Ross for the first time, and feeling a pinch in her chest at the way he gazes down on her. As she entered the middle verse, she got to her loudest before pausing, leaving a deliberate silence, basking in the silence of the room.

 _"But I couldn't tell you  
_ _Just tell that it takes you  
_ _'Cause words don't make…  
_ _what I make… with him._

 _Haven't you heard?  
_ _I'm stuck on a verse  
_ _I'm stuck on a boy  
_ _who fills me with joy_

 _I knew I was wrong  
_ _to jump straight on into  
_ _this picture so pretty...  
_ _But he is so pretty to me."_

Ross was catapulted back to that first family dinner in which all those in this room were introduced to Demelza, and how she stunned them all into silence with her servants song. This moment was of such magnitude as that, only ten fold. He felt a pressure on his chest as though Darkie had chosen to canter upon it, as her words whirled around his skull. _Just look in his eyes. They're dark as the skies. A picture so pretty…but he is so pretty to me._ He thought of that first night, when she was but his kitchen maid, yet he had felt an overwhelming urge to lose himself in her, and so he had, and she in him. Eye to eye, nose to nose, skin to skin… _But I couldn't tell you. Just tell that it takes you… 'Cause words don't make…what I make… with him._

Biting down on his lip, he found his hands clapping together in loud applause. _Quite right, Demelza._ There _were_ no words for whatever entwined them together, nor would there ever be… Though such a song brought them a damn sigh closer, he chortled to himself.

The room with filled with hearty, if not stunned, applause, and Mistress Warleggan, along with George, looked as though they had swallowed one of Prudes very worst pies. The sight made him grin, unadulterated and uncensored. _Yes. His wife was quite something, wasn't she?_

–x–

 _But I couldn't tell you  
_ _Just tell that it takes you  
_ _'Cause words don't make…  
_ _what I make… with him._

"There she is. My sweet Julia," Ross whispered against the cheek of his newborn daughter as the Poldark family of Nampara settled for bed not two hours later. Julia cooed into the crook of her father's neck, comforted by the warmth of his skin cocooning her. Her tiny toes wriggling against his nightshirt, and he is suddenly concerned that the fabric is too corse for her sensitive skin. He takes both tiny feet in his fingers, the velvet of her skin subduing even the most rough corners of his mind, corners that harbour deep regrets and demons.

"I love you, so very much," his whispered against the delicate wisps of her baby hair.

"She be a very lucky girl," came the voice of his wife as she settled into bed, her voice soft, but almost sorrowful. Ross turned his head her, questioningly raising a brow.

"Havin' a father as kind-'earted as you."

In an instant, Ross has pressed his mouth her his wife's temple and nuzzles against her ear, much like their daughter was doing to him, intending to convey his sadness and sorrow at her not having the father she deserves. The smile she gives him is lop-sided, a tired attempt to reassure him she was not as melancholy as he may think. No, she was simply exhausted.

"Never have I felt more fortunate…"

It is this same moment that Julia begins to grizzle in discontent, spurred into wakefulness at the sight of her mother.

"I think someone be hungry," Demelza smiles affectionately in the darkness, despite her tiredness.

"She most definitely takes after you, my love," Ross' hushed reply sounds through the darkness. "Her appetite is already as hearty as her mothers."

Demelza nudges her husband's shoulder with her nose as he passes their beloved newborn from his large arms to her own, with the tell-tale hesitancy and awkwardness of new parents. Pulling up the sheets to tightly around his wife's middle to maintain as much of her body heat as possible as she busied herself with freeing her breast from the nightshirt she worn, a nightshirt that belonged, in fact, to him. Ross propped himself against the head of the bed and simply took the opportunity to regard her in all her natural beauty. Watching nature unfold before him as his wife's body performs its most sacred and enchanting purpose in nursing their newborn daughter instilled such a primal, guttural reaction in him that he could barely contain it. His breathing increased as he lovingly regarded Julia suckling hurriedly on Demelza's taught pink bud, as though worried she may never feed again.

"You be starin' again, Ross," Demelza whispered as her finger rhythmically moved up and down Julia's tiny cheek, her face decorated with a suppressed smirk. Ross found himself biting his lip to keep from laughter as he knew he had been caught, shamelessly gazing upon her, _again._

"I would apologise if you were not so spellbinding," he breathed, lifting a hand to ghost his fingers along Julia's leg and taking her tiny foot into his palm. Demelza's eyes did not rise from their daughter, but, this time, with the downturn of her mouth, he knew it was out of avoidance of his gaze. "I mean it, Demelza," he pressed, his strained whisper attempting to communicate his earnest intentions. "You here, like this, providing from our child with your body, lit by the silver light of the moon…" His voice is ragged as he trails off, becoming unable to trust his emotions.

"Ross," she sighs, exasperated, shaking her head as though such compliments were untruths. "'ee spoil me with such words!––"

"I mean to do so!" Leaning so his face is level with hers, Ross holds her face so she cannot look away in doubt. "Do you not think you deserve such praise, _and miles more,_ after the way you have treated me today?!"

She does not speak, but looked up at him from behind her fare lashes.

"That song, Demelza… It felt like a folk song of our life together, a story of love as ancient as Romeo and Juliet…" He realised he was gushing, but he could find it in him to care. "Demelza, _when_ will you believe that you are worth your weight in _gold_?"

Demelza instantly moves away from him, cradling a now sleeping Julia against her chest before laying her down in her cot by the window. As she makes her way back to bed, she begin covering herself back up, her eyes cast down and her mouth a thin line. As she covers herself with the sheets, Ross cups her face, drawing her hungrily in for a kiss, then another, and another.

"Ross," Demelza's soft voice, wobbly with doubt and self-consciousness, only spurred him on, as his desire to assure her of her worth rekindled within him with a vengeance. His lips began a slow descent as her worshipped each inch of her skin that he encountered, soon peppering her milky breasts with kisses.

"Thank you, my love… For all you do… How you care for me, and for Julia… We would both be helpless without you…" His lips lazily settled on the pink taught bud that his daughter has suckled on not two minutes previously as he pulled it with his lips. Instantly, he felt his wife's entire frame freeze in hesitation.

"Ross, we be––" she began to question instantly, but he soothed her with solid kisses all over her face.

"Shh… I want you to feel cherished, love… I want you to see how cherished you make me feel." His large hands began to massage her soft stomach, hips, thighs… "Let me love you, Demelza."

As his hands kept moving, he felt her loosen and arch under his touch. His fingers found the familiar territory that always brought her to the highest of pleasures and began to manipulate it gently but persistently. As Demelza let her inhibitions fall away, Ross watched in fascination as her new body took on new reactions, as trails of milk began beading from her heavy, post childbearing breasts and down passed her ribs, leaving dampness on the sheets. He had heard of this, he realised, in the very small amount of literature he had taken to reading in an attempt to prepare himself with the norms of child birth and rearing. Milk is stimulated in times of distress, but also times of great pleasure, a thought which, though he could not place why if his life depended on it, has Ross almost unconsolable with desire. Reattaching himself to her breast, so instilled and driven by the image of his wife' body's new capabilities since becoming a mother, Ross took up all the milky moisture onto his tongue, revealing in the wanton nature of how is ran down his chin and smeared between their two bodies. A moment later, as he gently took her, he watched as her eyes rolled and her short nails dug rivets in the skin of his shoulders.

"Oh, Ross, _again_ ," she pleaded as paused his appreciation of her soft peaks. "Please, _again."_

Ross Poldark did not need asking twice. Instantly, he grasped the pillow either side of her head and lowered his mouth to her breast, licking, kissing and suckling in time with gently but whole thrusts of his body into hers. Beneath him, Demelza's breathing was in the form of short, sharp pants, as she evidently tried to refrain from letting the sensations of her body take over.

"My love, let it happen…" he whispered, desperate not to wake Julia while they were clouded by lust and passion. Her eyes are wide as his face is an inch from her own, frightened by the strength of the impending physical pleasures tightening in her gut. As he drove even deeper into her, she bit down painfully on her lip.

"I cannot," she whimpers, and Ross can feel her warm breath and sweat in the crook of his neck. "It's gon' blow me t' pieces, Ross–– _oh––I can't––"_

Ross, determined to bring her it all, speaks, before taking one long pull as her bosom, pressing down hard to her nerves. "Don't be afraid," he choked, his voice strained as he desperately attempted to hold himself back. "I shall endeavour to put them all back together," he groans. "Oh, _Judas,_ " Ross chokes as his own resolve almost reaches breaking point, his hands shaking as they tightened around tendrils of his wife's fiery curls against their pillows, his fingernails lightly massaging her scalp as he moved above her, their faces nose to nose.

It was only then that Ross Poldark realised his wife's eyes were leaking heavy tears down over her temples and into her hair, dampening his knuckles.

" _Ah,_ Demelza!" he cried in a whisper, almost driven to distraction by the way her body rose from the bed, arching up against him as she twitched and writhed as though charged by the power of lightening. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as jaw fell slack and Ross was sure he was about to expire as her body contracted around him in the most intimate of ways. He could last not a second longer, as white hot pleasure shot so aggressively through his every vein and nerve that he himself shuddered and bowed into her body.

"R-Ross–– _Ross––"_ Her utterances of his name came from her throat as sobs like a most holy mantra to the gods as her hands threaded into his curls from the back of his head, her legs creating a crushing grip around him as her whole body twitched aggressively; breasts, wet with milk, colliding against his broad chest with every shudder. To Ross' surprise, the lump in his throat had not dissipated, and at the sight of his wife, his _strong_ Demelza, crying for the second time in one evening, he had not a hope that it would.

"Oh, my love, what is it?" he cooed, lowering his face into the dip of her collarbone as they both drew much needed oxygen into their lungs.

"I––Ross, I––love––'ee, _so much––_ I can't bare i–it––" She stutters breathlessly, her chest shuddering as she choked over her words, tear after tear cascading down into her hair. "If 'ee be ever t' leave––"

"––Oh, my _darling_ girl," he whispers, having to clear his throat as his voice shakes. Ross lowered himself to the bed, taking his eight on his knees and forearms, either side of her body, his deep, trademark from taking root between his brows. He finds he is unable to find words, having never witnessed such an emotional declaration of love from any person in his life. It left him feeling like a floundering fish on the Cornish shores. How could she love him this way? A man who has no regard for the law, or for social niceties. A man who took her in to keep her from her abusive father, only to bed her in a moment of weakness… How could such a sweet and earnest woman love _him?_ He held her as she cried, curling her into his body in a cocoon of warm skin of man and wife. Demelza's swollen eyes regarded his face as his hands massaged up and down her back in a rhythmic motion to sooth her and it occurs to him that he feels as though she is staring straight through into his soul, laid bare and open. Her calloused hands suddenly bracketed his face, running her thumbs over his dark, expressive brows, over his eyelids as they fluttered closed, and, to his delight, over his scar with equal loving delicacy.

"This face." Her whispers shudder less as her tears begin to subside, with instead an intrinsic passion making light in her eyes – one that made him want her all over again. "It be hauntin' dreams of mine since the first day I set foot in this 'ouse." Ross remain still, silently enthralled with her confessions, for her felt never closer to her than this. _Yes,_ he wanted to know her every nook and cranny. _Yes,_ he wanted to be the one who knew her back and forth and inside out… _Only he._ "I know it be such a sin I'm admittin' to, since you was my master 'n all…but…well, those days are gone, now." Her small hand lowered and began threading through his chest hair, feeling the strong thud of his heart beneath, and she grinned at the sensation.

"My, my," he chastised, cheekily. "That's a smile and a half. Whatever is it for?" he enquired that kind, gentle voice of his, the one he only used when attempting to poke fun at her. She knew what his mind was about, and her smirk therefore only widened.

"How can 'ee be real?"

Her questioning tone is so soft and earnest that Ross is knocked for all his bearings, left to do nothing but regard her with wonder.

"What is it you mean?"

Dragging a hand down his face, a nail gently grazing down the length of his scar, she pressed a solid and confident palm over his heart, thrilled by the firm muscle and heat that radiated beneath her touch. " _How_ " she began, as though she was discussing the wonders of the world, or the divinity of god himself, her eyes wide with admiration, "is it that you be 'ere, with the likes 'a me? You 'ave always been so kind and givin' to me, and even Garrack. I was sure for six I'd be gone after 'ee bedded me…for sure that I'd be back with my father…to be beaten an' treated like the mud on their boots… Any other man _would '_ ave sent me packin', but not 'ee…" With a sure and decisive arm, she locks herself into an embrace which does not allow for him to look away in dismissal of her words – much like he often did to her, he mused. He began to shake his head, but two hands instantly grasped either side of his face, her lips leaving desperate kisses along his shadowed jaw.

"––Demelza," he sighed. He longed to say _'Enough now. You're grateful. I understand, but I am not worthy of this'_ but no words left his lips. Instead, her gazed at her in such utter fascination, as though she were suddenly a person he was seeing for the first time.

"No. I won' 'ave it. If I is not allowed to deny your 'eavenly words than you must 'ear mine, because _lord knows_ 'ee deserve 'em." Her chest began to heave, as tears took over, but neither acknowledged them. "'ee deserve so much more than I can articula'e… I is humbled by 'ee, Ross, to nothing but a worshipper of the ground 'ee walk on––" He went to protest. "–– _and yet…_ " She took a moment of consideration just as one giant salty tear slide from the curve of her nose, which Ross lifted a single finger to capture. " _And yet…_ you trea' me as if I deserve nothin' less than to be your _equal_ for eterni'y…" Looking right into his eyes, he could see the fire. "Now you tell me, 'ow can a man like tha'–– _you––exist_?"

Ross' heart hammered as his mind drew yet another blank, completely overwhelmed with the articulation and thought that his wife had clearly put into his praise of his character. How had he ever not loved her, he wondered? What was the world before Demelza? He could not for the world remember…

With a smile, Ross grasped her nude body and rolled them so they were side by side, under full protection of the blankets from the cold, his lips coming to rest lazily on her hairline. "The same way all of mankind continues to exist, my love," he whispers. "I have found my redemption, my undoing… and the one who makes me whole."

They fall into slumber easily after that, but not before Demelza , exhausted both physically and mentally. As each interval of hunger arrived that roused Julia into vocal discontent, Ross would do as much as he could by rising to retrieve the crying newborn and hushing her to a calmer state, before carefully passing her to a barely conscious Demelza. More often than not, both mother and babe would fall back into sleep after not two minutes of nursing. In such moments, Ross would take just a second to mentally document the moment of such serenity…

 _If there be a heaven,_ he thought, _surely it must resemble this?_


End file.
